by Benedicta Cipolla
For centuries, theologians, heads of state, and military strategists have sought to define rules governing entrance into war and just conduct during actual hostilities. But as violence and instability in Iraq extend to a third year and tensions persist among political groups despite elections and an emerging representative government, a debate about the need for clear ethical criteria in the postwar period is gaining new urgency among ethicists and religious thinkers.
The specter of the war itself and the shifting reasons for entering into it still hover over American postwar responsibilities, and questions about eventual withdrawal loom. "We have a moral obligation to assist the Iraqi people in their efforts to build a better future," said the Reverend Kenneth Himes, chair of the theology department at Boston College, at a recent Fordham University conference, "The Ethics of Exit: The Morality of Withdrawal from Iraq.""It is a presumptive obligation," he said, "and the force of presumption is directly related to why we fought the war." Because the United States claimed the humanitarian aim of removing Saddam Hussein for the good of the Iraqi people after the threat of weapons of mass destruction proved faulty, "the postwar situation must be factored into an ethical assessment of the war," said Himes.
"If you say we invaded the country not to punish but [to] help the people, then what do you owe them?" Himes asked. "What you owe them is more than simply, after you've destroyed buildings, helping them rebuild. You owe them some sort of changed circumstances."
Jean Bethke Elshtain, a professor of social and political ethics at the University of Chicago Divinity School, who in the lead-up to the current Iraq campaign asserted that it was morally justified, noted at the Fordham conference the difference between a war fought in favor of a country that has been unjustly invaded by another and one fought to overthrow a tyrant. In the first case, the intervening country would aim to restore the situation before the invasion, not unlike the 1991 Gulf War fought after Iraq invaded Kuwait. In the second case, she said, "perhaps borders will remain the same, but little else." Elshtain also said that the United States owes Iraq the "creation of a minimally decent, stable, democratic society."
Plans call for Iraq's new assembly to write a constitution by August, approve it by October, and then elect a new Iraqi government by December. Although there have been recent reports of possible U.S. troop reductions by early next year, there has also been some disapproval of the Bush administration's lack of a timetable for withdrawal as well as criticism of its poor postwar planning.
There are ethicists who agree that basic American obligations to Iraq include the rebuilding of infrastructure, the stabilization of oil resources and the economy, and the provision of utilities, food, and basic health care. But whether those obligations extend to the creation of an American-style democracy remains unresolved.
"I don't believe you can export democracy at the point of a gun barrel," says Shaun Casey, associate professor of Christian ethics at Wesley Theological Seminary. "I think liberal democracy is the best of all [political] ideas, but the means you choose to spread liberal democracy can determine the fate of whether it will be embraced or not, and that's what's missing in Bush's analysis. Do we have the right to violently force liberal democracy upon [Iraq]? I think that's a moral mistake."
George Lopez, a senior fellow at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, cautioned the Fordham conference that the U.S. goal of establishing democracy in Iraq and spreading it to the rest of the Middle East might represent cultural hubris. Lopez called for a phased U.S. troop withdrawal by February 2006 and expressed concern that the United States is currently operating in Iraq without a full recognition of "the other." "Virtually all arguments to stay the course are reasonably beneficial to a U.S. position and are forged, if not bounded by, U.S. cultural experiences," he said. "I worry that arguments about ethics are more about an American cultural point of view."
"We ought not to presume that our model of governance is universalizable," added Himes. "We want a government [in Iraq] that respects basic rights and treats people humanely. Beyond that, one has to respect the indigenous culture, and that may or may not evolve into something that looks more or less like American forms of democracy."
